Historical "safe rooms" Was: Science question about underground survival.

[Carol]

Carol responds:
> > 
> > All of which reminds me of Francis, Viscount Lovell. <snip>
>  Many years later, in 1708, the skeleton of a man was found in a
secret room at Minster Lovell. Apparently, Francis, twice declared a
traitor by Henry VII (whom he obviously had no desire to serve),
starved to death in his own basement "safe room" hiding from "the
Tydder" (Tudor)!
> 
> Potioncat:
> I rather like the historical-fiction!Lovell. I thought drowning in 
his armor in a river was bad enough. Are they sure the skeleton was 
Lovell's? <snip>

Carol:
No, they're not sure, but who else's could it be? I don't think there
were any other mysterious disappearances in the Lovell family (or
whoever inherited Minster Lovell after Francis was attainted. Could
Tudor supporters who acquired it from Henry have found Francis and
locked him in? For all we know, his wife might have retained her
family's Lancastrian sympathies and transferred them to Tudor, though
of course, it's unfair of me to suspect her with no evidence.) I don't
know what happened to the bones or whether there's any Lovell DNA that
could be used to determine their identity.
 
> > Carol, who expected the Malfoys' secret room to be a "safe room"
to hide from the Aurors in, rather safer than Francis Lovell's
> >
> Potioncat:
> I wouldn't have thought it would be so close to the main floor that
you could hear noises from it. 

Carol:
I was surprised by that, too.
> 
> Potioncat, wearing a pink rose, because she has been influenced by 
Carol and now can't decide beteen York or Lancaster--and feels that
puts her into the same mix as some rather unsavory historical  characters.

Carol:
Just out of curiosity, which unsavory characters wore their roses
pink? If you're thinking of the Tudors, they wore their roses
"damask'd white and red," to borrow Shakespeare's description of an
actual rose, although Elizabeth of York is depicted holding a white rose.

BTW, I recommend a little book called "The Mystery of the Princes" by
Audrey Williamson, not to be confused with "The Princes in the Tower"
by Alison Weir, which takes for granted Richard's guilt. (It talks
about Richard and the former princes, of course, not about Francis
Lovell. I don't agree with all her conclusions and inferences,
particularly that Richard was "asexual"!!!), but she has some
interesting background on Sir James Tyrrell, Perkin Warbeck, and
others that really ought to be brought into the debate. I'm now torn
between Buckingham did it and the sons of Edward IV survived Richard
III, with the older dying of natural causes and the younger living to
be executed horribly by Henry VII as Perkin Warbeck. At any rate, I've
always thought it likely, given their position ten feet beneath the
foundations of a staircase, that the bones of the "princes" date from
a much earlier era, probably Roman times.

Carol, why historians so often allow their preconceptions to color
their interpretations instead of using the scientific method as far as
possible